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This paper examines the existential implications of immobility and uncertainty experienced by Palestinians in a variety of situation, and the ways in which they navigate precarious and disorienting conditions in order to gain agency and make sense of the world.
Paper Abstract:
This paper examines immobility in the context of how Palestinians ‘stuck’ in different communities of the occupied West Bank and Gaza, make sense of everyday life in constantly shifting and precarious situations. The experience of everyday life of Palestinians is characterized by immobility and uncertainty in terms of ambiguities of citizenship and rights, the absence of a coherent state, and siege. Imposed geographic divisions and restrictions on the movement of people, products and information, have resulted in social fragmentation and isolation between communities, and different levels of ‘being stuck’. This paper examines the ways in which Palestinians existing in various spaces of immobility, negotiate to maintain social cohesion amid the disorientation of everyday life. In recent years grassroots civil society movements working across communities, which are independent of any political leadership, have been important in overcoming fragmentation as well as reclaiming a collective identity away from discourses of division, and allowed Palestinians in different communities to gain agency and navigate uncertainty. Finally, this paper will address the current situation in which Palestinians are living in various levels of ‘stuckness’ and uncertainty, and the paradoxes of immobility in the face of forced migration and displacement.